Happy anniverary to me, happy anniversary to me - and thank you to Twopcharts for the reminder

I don't usually bother with blogging milestones.  However, my friend Denis over at The Nature of Robertson has been marking dates and numbers of posts.  

I congratulated him with this comment:

Congratulations, Denis, on your blogging milestone. We have been blogging together for quite a while. I haven't kept up on milestones myself but have done a check.

I began with The Eagles Nest on 6 June 2005 and wrote over 800 posts at http://eaglesplace.blogspot.com.au/. This blog is now closed but still available.

I then continued at The Network with 1246 posts at misseaglesnetwork.blogspot.com. Then there are my other blogs as well. These are to be found by clicking on the tabs at the top of The Network.

We are on Facebook together but I have yet to convince you to begin tweeting.

You and I are living proof that social media is not the sole province of the younger ones.

I have made some wonderful friendships through blogging including you. With you, I have had some of my bestest times. Your expertise is invaluable to me and I frequently prevail upon your environmental knowledge, particularly in relation to birds and plants. And then you send through to me material which you think will be appropriate to my interests.

When we first started blogging you were not in good health ... but you have survived some very serious life issues. Your fortitude, courage, and survival are admirable.

And even now you are often to be found on your tummy in adoration - and gleaning knowledge - of ground orchids. Words fail me in this regard!

Above all, one has to commend you in your endeavours to familiarise people with the Creation around them - through your lectures and tours in national parks and through your blog as well as membership in many environmental organisations.

9:23 AM, June 22, 2012 

However, imagine my surprise when I opened up my HootSuite this morning to find that I have been on Twitter for four years and it is MY anniversary. Thx to the good folks at Twopcharts for reminding me. Whoda thunk it?  Only seems like a month or three ago!

World Poetry Day: a Tweet in any other form would taste as sweet...#poetry #literature #poetweet

Tweet

Picture from here

To-day is UN World Poetry Day.

Randy Kennedy has written in The New York Times 

about Twitter and literature, including poetry.  

A call has gone out for poets to contribute their work on Twitter.  

Contribute with #poetweet

Related articles

• Short And Tweet: The Top 7 Tweets Of The Week From The Fringe And Famous (huffingtonpost.com)
• On Twitter's "Birthday," World Poetry Day & #poetweet (seapoetry.wordpress.com)
• Celebrate World Poetry Day at Little Penang (tsnra.wordpress.com)
• Interview with Poet and Author D.M. Landreneau (POESRAVENLADY) {via Backyard Poetry} (haikulovesongs.wordpress.com)
• How Do I Love Thee? Count 140 Characters (utwitterit.com)
• Four New Twitter Poems (nytimes.com)

Of Geeks and #WikiLeaks : Australians are keeping count

Tweet

Yeah, I know. A lot of us are getting paranoid - but there are a lot of reasons for moderate doses of paranoia, don't you think Networkers?  Anyway, in the USA they are exhibiting massive, nay I should say extreme, rather than moderate doses of paranoia.  When we get to keeping Twitter categorisation honest we could be accused of paranoia, but geeks and WikiLeaks go hand in hand and the whole point of being a geek is that you pay attention to technical detail.  I am certainly no geek so in the Blogosphere and Twitterverse I am, from time to time, dependent upon their ideas, work, and suppositions.

So it is that I want to share with you something from safety first.  A lot of work lies behind the post, Twitter is censoring the discussion of #Wikileaks. Take a look, Networkers, especially if you Tweet.  Firstly, it must be said that Twitter deny any form of censorship.  But even non-Geeks can get the drift - if not the detail - of the post.  

Why bother, one might ask?  At the moment, in case you haven't noticed, here in the Land of Oz people are counting. They are counting responses to newspaper polls; comments on articles; comments on blog posts. And there are many in these categories chalking up huge numbers - most in support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.  So, if organisations such as Twitter are not providing clear and accurate data, people notice.  Governments notice.  And people who support Freedom of Information/Wikileaks/Assange in Australia are watching the numbers and watching the response of the Gillard Government to how our Australian citizen, Julian Assange, is being treated.  To be sure, the Gillard Government is not letting the responses to newspaper polls; comments on articles; comments on blog posts go unremarked.

The USA might be watching how its allies - such as Australia - respond to the Assange/WikiLeaks controversy.  It is clear that Aussies are watching how their government responds to an Australian citizen being harassed by the US Government.

Stephen Fry - International Treasure and Twitterer beyond compare

Click on this picture and the others in this post to enlarge.

Do you follow, like mois, Stephen Fry on Twitter?  If so, a few hours ago, you probably felt like you had your Twitter clogged with consecutive Stephen Fry tweets.  There was a reason.  He was being interviewed for the Evening Standard, which he explained before the interview began - but if you came in the middle you wouldn't have known that, perhaps, and couldn't understand exactly what was being said.  To see the questions being asked, you had to go to the interviewer's Twitter.  

There is no doubt about Fry.  He confesses he loves everything new - and he must be breaking all records to chalk up firsts relating to Twitter.

1. Instrumental in overturning that scandalous libel decision in the UK which meant even Parliament could not discuss the decision.
2. Arguably the first person to make money from Twitter, by promoting his recent London event which promoted his book and which was telecast live to numerous centres across the UK - to popular demand as was his recent Melbourne appearance.
3. Possibly the first to conduct a newspaper interview on Twitter - but will await confirmation

We have heard of people being National Treasures, I hereby nominate Stephen Fry as the very first International Treasure.  Welcome at my place anytime!

For those who don't participate in the Twitterverse,
Stephen Fry is one of the most prolific Tweeters in the world.
At last count, he was being "followed" by 1,776,170 people.
So, if Stephen Fry, says something 
that's an awful lot of people to take notice.

Related Reading

The Fry Chronicles

Stephen Fry in America: Fifty States and the Man Who Set Out to See Them All

Moab Is My Washpot

Stephen Fry in America

The Liar

BOYCOTTING ISRAELI GOODS MADE IN PALESTINE : SOME PALESTINIANS ARE CHRISTIANS : DEAD SEA DEGRADATION

The National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA) is asking its members to consider boycotting goods produced by Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.  Australia has a strong and proud history in relation to boycotts, most notably with the boycott of South African goods (remember the Birds Eye Fish Fingers campaign!) and sporting boycotts.  These two factors alone made significant contributions to the downfall of apartheid in South Africa.  

The NCCA is asking us to reflect on the situation in Palestine and the Occupied Territories.  Many Palestinians are Christians - and some from the most ancient of Christian communities - yet we tend to lump all Palestinians together as troublesome, Israeli-killing, suicide bombing Moslems.  And is it any wonder!  Israelis and so many among the Jewish diaspora would want us to believe this.

Just look at the second part of this article!  

I think it is time for many in the Jewish community to remember the adage that if you want friends you have to act like a friend.  I know there are Jewish people in Israel who think like me and I actually know a couple.  And they do act in friendship with the Palestinians in so many ways.  

So many people seem to forget the Christian connection to Palestine.  For instance, back in 2003, when Dr Hanan Ashrawi was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, Frank Lowy - on behalf of the Jewish community - rang Bob Carr, then Premier of NSW and one of the decision makers of the Sydney Peace Prize, to seek the withdrawal of the award to Dr Ashrawi.  Needless to say, Lowy did not succeed.  But the hide - the very hide - both of the Jewish community and Lowy himself!  BTW, it is said that the softest thing about Lowy is the enamel on his teeth.  

And the Christians in Australian were of precious little help.  Because, Networkers, not only is Dr Ashrawi a Christian, she is a staunch Anglican and, it seemed, that this did not dawn on the Anglican Church in Sydney until some time later.  That is how good the majority of Australian Christians have been in their relationships with Palestine and Palestinian Christians.

It may be difficult to identify products that could be targets for boycotts, but the Dead Sea cosmetics are familiar to Australians living in Melbourne.  The sales and promotional people for these products frequently accost us in shopping malls.

And since the Dead Sea entered into the conversation, I want to point out what is actually happening to the Dead Sea.  For the last fifty years, at least, we have been told how the Jewish people have made the desert bloom in Israel.  Australian farmers have been among those who have copied some of the Israeli irrigation techniques.  However, Israel, it seems, is no more environmentally conscious than the rest of us - in spite of propaganda.  The evidence of this is in what has happened and is happening to the Dead Sea.  It is a mess.

There are, you may be pleased to hear, Israelis working to make everyone aware of this situation and working to fix this dreadful and significant degradation.  So, in the spirit of "to have friends, be a friend", please go to the Save our Sea website and join the Save our Sea Facebook campaign and follow the campaign on Twitter.

Further reading:

NCCA Passes Resolution for Peace in Palestine

Act for Peace website

Israel to expel 400 children

The plagiarists and content kleptomaniacs overturned censorship on Twitter

Further to my post here yesterday, take a look at this extensive piece of censorship in Britain overturned by 104 words on Twitter.  Astonishing!  It is by well known Sydney lawyer, Richard Ackland who, once upon a long ago, used to host Media Watch on ABC Television.

A simple Twitter brings down the mighty cone of silence

October 16, 2009

I hope no one missed this week's legal excitement in London. The British oil trading company Trafigura managed to get a ''super-injunction'' to prevent reporting of the findings into its dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast's biggest city, Abidjan.

Thousands were injured by waste containing tonnes of phenols, hydrogen sulphide, corrosive caustic soda and quantities of mercaptans. Trafigura denied it was dangerous, but nonetheless paid £100 million ($175 million) to the Ivory Coast Government to clean up the mess and agreed to compensation of £1000 each for the 30,000 people made ill.

All this was accompanied by actions for libel and injunctions. Last month The Guardian published claimed evidence that the company tried to conceal the scale of the pollution. Internal emails were cited as showing that staff knew that disposal of the waste could be hazardous.

The media still cannot publish the findings of the Minton Report's investigation of the scandal - one of the most appalling injunctions in recent memory.


What happened next was the explosive bit. A member of the House of Commons placed a question on what we call the notice paper. Labour MP Paul Farrelly asked what measures ministers were taking to protect whistleblowers and press freedom following the injunction obtained by Trafigura.


The oil trader's lawyers were from the law firm Carter-Ruck, much hated by the London media for its attack-dog approach to ''reputational management issues''. A libel lawyer, David Hooper, said on the death of Peter Carter-Ruck in 2003 that ''he did for freedom of speech what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen''.


The law firm managed to extract from the court an injunction so wide not even the fact the injunction existed, let along what it was about or the identities of the parties, could be published.


When it became apparent The Guardian might report Farrelly's parliamentary question, the paper received one of the law firm's menacing letters, saying to report the member's question would be a contempt of court.


The paper was reduced to saying it could not identify the MP, the question, or which minister might answer it. ''The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented - for the first time in memory - from reporting parliament.'' All that could be reported was that the case involved ''the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations''.


That was on Monday this week. As Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, left his office that evening he posted this on Twitter: ''Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?''


Wilkes was the 18th century journalist and MP instrumental in getting government to accept the right of printers to publish actual accounts of parliamentary proceedings. Arguably, he was the father of political journalism.

Wilkes campaigned for the enforcement of the Bill of Rights of 1689, which granted a lot of civil and political rights, including that ''proceedings of parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of parliament''.

It was imported into Australia and other Commonwealth countries. It is quite amusing to reflect that at the time of its introduction England had been through a period of political upheaval. Opposition to the bill was widespread, particularly by non-Protestants. It was said to be unconstitutional, would lead to chaos and spread uncertainty. Much the same widely misinformed racket accompanies the idea that Australia embrace legislation to give a range of civil and political rights to people outside the magic circle of privileged lawgivers and newspaper shrills.

But Rusbridger's Twitter item set off a chain reaction that was beyond the lawyers and the courts to stop. Out there in blogosphere, the reaction was astounding. Rusbridger said: ''Twitter's detractors are used to sneering that nothing of value can be said in 140 characters. My 104 characters did just fine.''


Twitter users then tracked down Farrelly's question and links to it were published widely.

By midday on Tuesday ''Trafigura'' was among the most searched words in Europe. Stephen Fry re-tweeted everything to his 830,000 followers.

An hour before The Guardian was to go to court to seek permission to publish the question, Trafigura and Carter-Ruck threw in the towel. The new ''other'' media turned a secret into a notorious avalanche of information.

justinian@lawpress.com.au

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald